California governor seeks college vote for Prop 30

SACRAMENTO -- Nae Winston, a 19-year-old Sacramento City College student, knows a lot of her peers won't be voting this year "because they're too busy, or they don't know where to go to vote."

But after hearing Gov. Jerry Brown beseech a couple hundred of her fellow students to vote for his tax initiative, Proposition 30, she said she's determined to spread the word.

"He got me to want to vote," she said. "Before, I never took it serious."

With less than three weeks to go before the election and with polls showing dwindling support for Proposition 30, Brown has begun a tour of college campuses. He's finding a fertile ground of new voters anxious about their future to tout his initiative, which would raise $6 billion a year by hiking the sales tax by one quarter cent and income taxes on individuals who earn $250,000 or more.

Brown offered a more textured explanation of Proposition 30 than the campaign's 30-second ads, which have shied away from mentioning that the revenue will be available to the general fund to free up billions of dollars for various programs.

"Education has to be No. 1, but when the whole pot of money gets smaller, then everything gets cut," Brown said. "So, the idea of Prop. 30 is to put more money into state coffers so we can pay for schools and colleges and the University of California. This is a crucial opportunity."

It's a key point that Molly Munger, the author of Proposition 38, a rival tax-hike initiative, used in advertisements she pulled only this week that portrayed money flowing from school houses to politicians' hands.

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Munger's measure would add $10 billion that go directly to schools for 12 years, though it would not prevent the nearly $6 billion in trigger cuts ordered by the Legislature if Proposition 30 fails.

But supporters said Proposition 30 has a much broader approach, for instance, benefiting community colleges by adding $210 million in new funding and preventing $338 million in cuts in January, which would be on top of $800 million already cut since 2008-09.

"We have made enough cuts to community colleges," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento

In all, if Proposition 30 fails, a total of $5.4 billion would be cut from K-12 schools and community colleges, while another $250 million would be cut each from the California State and University of California systems.

Troy Myers, an English professor at Sacramento City College since 1999 and a member of the Academic Senate, said more cuts would mean more students would be turned away from courses. Years ago, if there were more students than available courses, they could appeal for a new course section to be created.

"Now, there's absolutely no hope of that," Myers said. "That crimp in the pathway for students to get educated will injure the economy over the years because community colleges are one of the great engines of our economy."

Brown, who made no mention of Proposition 38, spoke loftily of what a college education means to students.

"You're here to learn not just facts, but you learn how to think, you open your minds," he said. "We come into the world with our own narrow conceptions. When you come to a school, you learn about history, you learn about the world, you learn about other people. That's really what building a society and a civilization is all about."